My last post finished with a reference about continuing the rewrite of the ESL Scales. Yesterday the ESL consultants, Karyl Martin, our manager, and Bev White from Catholic ED met with Bronwyn Custance, the writer, to continue this process. We worked in pairs to track development of criteria (eg circumstances) across pairs of scales and to give her some advice about the recommendations coming from the reference group. When the consultants meet again in a couple of weeks time, we will try tracking individual criteria across all year levels. Bronwyn doesn't need my endorsement, but I think she is well on track with the draft. She has drafted Scales 1-10 to date and plans to do the next two within the first few weeks of next term. As well as having a detailed knowledge of the Australian Curriculum, her knowledge of grammar is tremendous. On top of all this she has the ability to manage such a big task with ease. With her at the helm, I am very hopeful the draft document can be trialled in schools in term 3.
It may interest you that the Aust Curric Literacy Continuum we are using as the framework for the new Scales is also being used in SPALL (Secondary Principals As Literacy Leaders) course. You may be aware that PALL, primary principals' version, had its Big 6 for Reading. It appears that the Big 6 in SPALL will be the elements of the literacy continuum (eg text knowledge, grammar, word knowledge). Therefore I anticipate that the new Scales will have a better reception in secondary schools than the current version had.
Based upon participant feedback after the last Secondary ESL Teacher Network meeting, the consultants are planning for the next meeting to have a single focus: The Australian Curriculum. It will be held after school on Wednesday 30th May. Look out for fliers in Term 2 with more details or email me at ross.hamilton@sa.gov.au
Continuing the theme of Australian Curriculum, a couple of days ago I met with Mat Charleston, senior leader at Brompton Primary. I showed him some additional resources I have developed to show the links between noun groups and nominalisation and the new curriculum. It throws up some inconsistencies in the curriculum, but both of these language items introduced in TESMC are important to the literacy in all four Phase 1 subjects (ie Eng, Mths, Sci, Hist). There is also some material in module 1 of the new L4L course that makes more general connections with literacy in the Aust Curric.
We also started discussing how TESMC participants at his school could demonstrate they had "taken on" new learning from the course. I had developed a checklist for a classroom walk through, but Mat's proposal, which I have to admit is better than mine, is to have each teacher host a staff meeting in their classsroom during which they spend 10 minutes showing artefacts (eg genre posters, register continuum posters, teaching and learning cycles) and explaining how they use them with their students.
Happy Easter and enjoy the term holidays and I will try to post again in the second week of the school holidays when I return to work. I enjoy my job, but 4 weeks annual leave is a struggle at times.